Big Audio Dynamite is a Great Band
I was sitting in my parent’s living room when MTV’s Breaking News announced that The Clash, “The Only Band that Matters,” had sacked founding member Mick Jones over continued internal feuds between the band members following their commercial break through release Combat Rock.
By all accounts, Jones, Strummer, Headon and Simonon could no longer stand each other, realizing that they had sold out by signing on to a stadium tour opening for the Who, money, greed and the rock star life was the antithesis of what they were trying to achieve, but it was the forced departure of drummer Topper Headon, who had written the track Rock the Casbah and became addicted to Heroin, that put the complete disintegration of The Clash into motion.
Strummer wanted the band to return to its punk roots, Jones was leaning towards funk and Simonon wanted to head in a reggae direction. Jones, who had resented Strummer for wrestling creative control away from him and Strummer and Simonon were tired of Mick’s rock-star attitude and his continued absences from band rehearsals, sacked Jones in late 1983.
“Mick was intolerable to work with by this time,” said the late Strummer in the book, The Rise and Fall of the Clash, “We got so much work to do that we can’t waste time begging people to play the damn guitar!”
“We felt we’ve had enough, lets kick him out and that’s what we decided on and to hell with the consequences,” bassist Simonon added.
Unfortunately, the consequences resulted in The Clash’s disappointing swan song Cut the Crap, an album even Strummer would eventually disown, and the complete dissolution of the band in 1985. “CBS had paid an advance for it so they had to put it out”, Strummer later explained in The Clash Talking. “I just went, ‘Well fuck this’, and fucked off to the mountains of Spain to sit sobbing under a palm tree, while Bernie had to deliver a record.”
While Joe was taking a break in Spain, Mick Jones created General Public with Dave Wakling and Ranking Rogers of the ska pop band The English Beat; Jones left prior to the release of G.P.’s Tenderness, and began to put together a band with film director and DJ Don Letts, Keyboardist Don Donovan, English-Jamaican bassist Leo Williams and drummer Greg Roberts that would become Big Audio Dynamite; a band some would argue was more innovative than The Clash.
Fast forward to 1985 and I’m watching MTV when Big Audio Dynamite’s video The Bottom Line aired for the first time. Reagan was president, Thatcher was Prime Minister, the cold war was in full motion creating a continued ominous threat of nuclear war, deficit spending, conservatism, and nationalism perpetrated and exploited by both the U.S. and Great Britain…and Big Audio Dynamite was here to exploit and make fun of it all.
A dance to the tune of economic decline, Is when you do the bottom line. Nagging questions always remain, Why did it happen and who was to blame
– The Bottom Line — Big Audio Dynamite
This is Big Audio Dynamite, the debut release from B.A.D. was a ground breaking release featuring samples from Clint Eastwoods A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, as well as Duck, You Sucker and laughter from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The Nicholas Roeg tribute “E=MC2” included samples from Performance and Medicine Show saw the appearance of Joe Strummers crowing from the song London Calling.
Big Audio Dynamite had officially fused Rock, Dance, RB, Reggae, early Hip-Hop and the visual arts together to create a new sound that would eventually influence bands like the Libertines and Gorillaz. The video for Medicine Show, a 6:12 track about consumerism and the worlds future reliance on a magic cure-all to make life easier, featured a who’s who from the punk community. Both Strummer and Simonon appear in the video as well as Johh Lydon of Public Image Ltd and The Sex Pistols.
In India we’re all the rave, Discovered that its great as aftershave
Dropped in the sea just off Japan, Swapped 20 bottles for an aqua-walkman
Immunity from ridicule, Improves your brains if you’re a fool
And I read in the Middle East, They traded some for a hostage release
Now if you’re bald it’ll give you hair, If you got straight trousers it’ll give you flares
Feeling up you’ll get depressed, Out of style here’s a brand new dress
Medicine Show — Big Audio Dynamite
I consider debut albums by artists to be a greatest hits release; an artist or band can spend years penning tracks that appear on their first album creating an illusion that every song is a number one hit. This is Big Audio Dynamite was no different I thought, until No. 10 Upping Street arrived in late 1986.
The second release from B.A.D. was more sociopolitical and contained samples from Matt Dillion, Laurence Fishburne, Brazilian football commentator Osmar Santos and “C’mon Every Beatbox” sampled the film “The Harder They Come, The Harder They Fall.” Beatbox was eventually morphed into a 12” single track called “Badrock City” and “V-Thirteen,” a song named after a territorial tag drawn by the members of Venice 13 was re-released on a B-side as “The Big V.”
So the holy smokes are coming we got a confirmation
Centre of the city been a major transformation
Gandhi got a shock and he took a vacation
Check the wild life it’s a real fascination
Hope they stay in line
Raiders Posse¨ British born but still they’re Jamaican
Dailing 999
Salt ‘n pepper people stirred not shaken
C’Mon Every Beatbox — Big Audio Dynamite
Including bonus tracks released on the Legacy Edition, Joe Strummer co-writes ten of the tracks and co-produces the entire album.
Tighten up Volume 88’ — whose cover was designed by Clash former band-mate Paul Simonon — was release in 1988 to mediocre reviews, but still upheld the traditional B.A.D. sound which was more dancey.
The fourth and final album under the moniker Big Audio Dynamite was Megatop Phoenix; produced by Mick Jones and Bill Price, Mick Jones experiences a near death experience and nearly died prior to the recording of the album in 1989 and ‘phoenix’ is a reference to his experience.
Many fans hail Megatop Phoenix as Big Audio Dynamite’s greatest efforts, the album dove further into dance/pop cross-over while remaining inventive and relevant to the approaching 90’s. B.A.D. amped up their cut-and-paste approach to sampling — something that was lost on Tighten Up Volume 88’ — by incorporating numerous musical and film sources. Megatop Phoenix was basically built on samples included tape rewind from “Stalag 123,” and snippets from The Who, Alfred Hitchcock, James Brown, Noel Coward, Bernard Cribbins and Arthur Scargill and B.A.D. interviews.
Critics disagreed and the Village Voice’s rock critic Robert Christgau gave Megatop Phoenix a C+ and by the end of the year, Mick Jones would fire the entire band and in 1990 release, The Globe under the name Big Audio Dynamite II.
The Globe produced the only commercially successful charting single in B.A.D.s long spanning career called Rush which hit number one on the US Modern Rock chart. In 1997, Big Audio Dynamite in all forms officially disbanded and Mick Jones went on to form Carbon/Silicon with former Generation X/Sigue Sigue Sputnick bassist Tony James.
At the age of 16, Big Audio Dynamite was my favorite band whose lyrics are just as relevant today as they were in the 80s and 90s, whose music was more innovative than anything coming out today and for all of the lengthy articles, books and cheap documentaries calling The Clash “The Only Band that Matters,” Mick Jones and his custom made Bond Electraglide guitar, keyboards, samples and loops were on the cutting edge of technology.
